Blank is scary.

In my primary line of work, it’s very common to be told to create … something.

Just something. “It’s kinda like this and maybe it says this, but think of it this way.”

“Maybe.”

The assigner rarely knows exactly what that something is. That’s until he sees your creation. Then the assigner knows exactly what that something is. And it’s never what you created.

It’s a horrible cycle.

Get half-heartedly told what to maybe possibly do. Then get ripped apart for guessing incorrectly.

A friend of mine brought up a good point. The process must exist this way. Because people are inherently afraid of blank pages. Putting pen to paper is a horrifying experience akin to laying your palm on a hot stove.

But create a base, put a pan on that stove and fill it with spices and vegetables, and that person, the assignee, has something to critique. To change. To salt up, re-chop, modify and preen and twist and bend and redo.

My boyfriend recently made the same point. People who can’t design can still critique. They are incapable of making something out of nothing. So you must provide and then redo. Endlessly.

“Try this color. Move this line.”

In writing, it’s very similar. “Use this word instead. Get rid of that sentence. No, wait. Just move the sentence. Get rid of all of the adjectives.”

Sometimes the modifications make sense. A lot of the time they do. But a lot of the time they don’t. The assignee just has to make changes simply so his voice is in there somewhere. Even if it sounds like a screeching bird.

So now I’m going to completely erase everything I’ve just written. Go back to a blank page. Because hours after I’ve started writing, I got a direction change. Well, two direction changes within the course of 10 minutes from two different people who most-likely haven’t spoken.

And despite the risks of being incorrect and typing the wrong things, getting two people in a room together to iron down the direction is like trying to build a spaceship out of rubber bands and staples.

So I’ll again attempt to fill this blank page with words. And pray they’re they right ones.

It was me. I did it.

If you've been wondering which one of your neighbors called you in for a noise violation, wonder no longer.

It was me.

It was me in a very sleep deprived, head pounding, delirious state.

You had been blaring your bass for days with no end in the foreseeable future. And I just couldn't take it any longer.

You live in an apartment, dude. You have to respect the people around you. Have some courtesy or get a house. I hear it's a buyer's/renter's market.

Call me an old lady if you must, but your punk rock isn't appropriate at deafening volumes at 12:30 AM on a Monday.

I could literally hear the music while the sink was running. From another floor. While it was raining.


So I did what I had to. I called you in. I complained. And eventually, the music muted.

And I slept very well for the first time in nights.

And I enjoyed the silence for three nights.

Tonight, I hear the pounding again. Over my TV. Over my typing. Over my buzzing hard drive.

Although it's way beyond the building's quiet time, I'll give you until midnight before I call again.

Two strikes, buddy. You really going to test me a third time? You wouldn't want to get evicted because of a stereo, would you? That just seems very immature. High school, even.

... Oh, that's funny. Just like that, right before I publish this post, it stops.

The pen really is mightier. Even if it's anonymous.

Don't anger the machine ghosts.

Call me a nutter if you must, but I have a very firm belief that machines have feelings.

My computer has both good and bad days.

My phone just needs to be alone from time to time.

And my camera takes things personally.

It's true. These electronics feed off of my emotions. And if I'm thinking something that can be construed negatively in any way, my machines punish me.

Take my computer, for example. For the first three years of its life, it was running like a top. It was fast, the screen never blinked, the keys never stuck.

Then one day, I mention to a coworker, "Yeah, I want a new computer, but there's nothing wrong with my old one." Then wind blew heavily against the windows. Despite my better judgement I added, "Perhaps it'll get sick so I can get a new one."

No joke, later that day, Stone Fox (yes, that's its name) crashed for the first time.

"Baby, don't do this to me! I didn't mean it!" I yelled at the blue screen of death. I got a cursor in response. But nothing to click on.

Over a lesson learned, two hundred dollars and some days later, it worked like a top again. Which is great. Because now we'll be together until the day I die. I did buy an external hard drive, though. 80 gigs will be nothing by next year. (I love you, computer.)

My phone, on the other hand, isn't really mad at my threatening to replace it. Because I'm not. But a new iPhone will be joining the family come my boyfriend's birthday. And my little iStone Fox (yes, that's its name) has been finicky ever since.

It's not running excessively slow or anything. Or even freezing up too often. But something's just off. Maybe it's because my wallpaper keeps defaulting to a photo of a middle finger. Come to think of it, I don't remember putting that on the phone in the first place ...

The latest electronic to tell me to fuck off is my old point-and-shoot digital camera. Ever since I got the pro camera, ol' Lumix (it's not an Apple product, so it's not a Stone Fox) has been withholding photos from me. That's right. Withholding photos.

When I empty the camera onto my computer, everything goes smoothly. Then I'll be out and about, ready to take some photos and I'll notice there are three or four pictures remaining on my card.

It's my camera's way of giving me a raspberry.

This has happened a few times now. And it never happened until I bought the DSLR. Very bizarre indeed.

So treat your electronics well, my friends. Because they're bigger parts of your life than you may realize. And these little machines aren't afraid to teach you that lesson the hard way.

No, I will not just take the meat out.

I don’t eat mammals or fowl. The simplest way of phrasing that is by saying I’m a vegetarian. But by definition, that means I survive on vegetation alone, which isn’t entirely true.

I will drink milk (lacto-tarian). I like eggs (ovo-tarian). I enjoy sushi (pescatarian). I just don’t want to eat anything that has (or is genetically supposed to have) lungs and legs.

So for the ease of writing this rant, I’ll just use the phrase vegetarian.

Whenever I’m offered a food item and it contains some sort of mammalian or feathered ingredient, I usually politely decline without mentioning my diet.

But some people won’t let you refuse food. It’s just their nature.

So I must come up with some sort of reason why I don’t want the pepperoni pizza or the turkey sandwich or the cocktail weenie.

“I don’t eat meat,” is usually the quickest response. I can’t say my refusal is dietary because “diet” has become so synonymous with weight loss that I always get a you’re-so-skinny lecture. I can’t claim heart problems or genetics because people simply read your waist size when accessing your health.

So I’m honest. I say I don’t eat meat.

And that’s hardly ever good enough.

I’m quite positive that over 90% of the time, the person offering food responds with, “Then just take it off.”

That’s their logic. “Just take it off.” As if it’s so easy to scrape the cells and atoms of that turkey from off of the spongy bread. As if the entire pizza slice isn’t covered in the grease from those meaty pepperonis. As if the pork shank in the stew isn’t infecting the floating bits of celery and potato.

“It’s just there for flavor,” I’ve been told.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Tell the vegetarian who vomits at the smell of meat that the bone marrow is just for flavor. Genius. What do you think causes the flavor, asshole? The mere thought of meat? Because I’m sure there’s a little more science involved. Like the breakdown of tissues with heat and the diffusion of the oils and fats into the surrounding edibles.

Do you know what would happen if I ate all of that pizza grease? I’d probably vomit. It’s happened before. I was served something with meat juice in it (I was blatantly lied to), and I tossed my cookies for hours.

That’s right. Serving chicken broth or bacon bits or what have you to a vegetarian is giving them a good, thick slice of slowly creeping food poisoning.

So if you’re one of those just-take-the-meat-out people, change your ways. Change them now. Because as idiotic as you think we vegetarians may be for our over-sensitivity and bleeding hearts, at least we’re somewhat logical when it comes to food composition.

Just show a little more respect.

February is upon us.

January is now half over (give or take a day). And that means February will grace us with her colder weather, her infamous lovey dovey holiday and—

—her Girl Scout cookies.

Like clockwork, February begins and droves of little girls in green invade strip malls and Walmarts around the U.S., bringing with them the most delicious cookies ever baked.

Whenever I see a Girl Scout, I run in her direction. It’s like the fight-or-flight response that mammals have, only different. And way more violent. Once I ran straight through an F-250. True story.

But for Thin Mint cookies, it was worth it.

A more perfect cookie never existed. Could never exist. Will never exist! Unless you compare Thin Mints to Thin Mints that have been in the freezer for a while.

Holy moly mother of mint!

First, you have the thin layer of heavenly, minty chocolate that could only come from the most blessed tears of the most holy lamb. Then, you have the crunchy, dark cookie inside. The combination of the softer chocolate with the crispness of the cookie is enough to send one into sensation over load.

I want them all of the time. And I only get them in February.

Even if it was a documented fact that eating Thin Mints causes anal bleeding, I’d still tip the Girl Scout five bucks and open the box on the way to my car (after lining the seats in plastic).

Some things are simply worth the pain, after all.

I did a complete 180.

In just a month shy of a year, I've done a complete medical 180.

Literally.

Tonight, just moments ago, I straightened my new knee all the way to 180 degrees for the first time since surgery.

I managed to sit straight-legged and get my heel of the ground. So I even went a teeny bit beyond.

It's been a year, a whole year since my leg has been completely straight.

I forgot how good it feels.

The doctors and therapists and nurses all told me it would take a year.

But together, Knee and I managed to do it in 11 months.

I can't help it, I started to cry. Right there in the gym full of manly men. You could probably even say I sobbed. But it was wonderful. Knee and I did it!

We feel pretty good right about now.

Where's the ibuprofen again?

That's heavy.

I love men. As much as I sometimes hate them, I absolutely love the pants off of them—sometimes literally.

But the thing I really love about them is their physical strength.

Men are strong. There’s no denying it. When it comes to lifting and carrying things, a man who doesn’t work out versus a woman who doesn’t can lift like three times as much without even flinching.

I can watch men pick up heavy things all day long.

Just the other day while working out, I’d sneak glances at my boyfriend. Just watching him pick up weights and carry them across the room made me squeal.

It’s a good thing everyone was wearing iPods.

Then he decided to do some bicep curls with this weight-laden bar that I couldn’t lift off of me during an adrenaline rush.

And he kept curling it. And kept curling it. And kept curling it.

And my face went slack as the drool slid down my chin. Who knows how long I stayed propped up against the bike in my comatose state.

Knowing he has the power of a Dodge Ram only makes me want to scream strange orders at him—watch him lift objects for the sake of lifting.

“Sweetie, could you help me pick up this table? Just set it down in the same spot”

“Hey, that recliner needs to move three feet that way. And then three feet in the opposite direction.”

“Oh, this laundry basket full of cement is so heavy! Could you carry it for me?”

It’s even better when he picks me up. Usually he doesn’t have a choice cause I’ll run out from behind a wall andleap into his arms like some kind of lemur from hell. I don’t think he minds too much, even when he groans, “Woman, what are you doing?”

Other times, I’ll simply say, “Pick me up!”

“No,” he usually replies. But I climb up anyway.

After all, no means yes, right?

I’m going to start slipping steroids into his breakfast cereal so he can help me move my car sometime.

And so it goes

If there’s one thing about life that’s totally unfair, it’s the aging process.

Not because you get wrinkles and your joints stiffen. But because your parents get wrinkles and their joints stiffen.

By the time we’re old enough to truly appreciate our parents, to party and gallivant with them, they’re usually too old for that behavior.

If my parents were even in their forties right now while I’m in my twenties, I can only imagine how things would be different. They’d stay up later. Their opinions would be a smidgen closer to mine. We’d have fewer conversations about vitamins and vision problems and more conversations about, I don’t know, vodka and Viagra (okay, so that’s for old people, but it’s a V word).

We’d dance more. Their younger, sharper brains would get more of my jokes. They’d complain less about the salt content or temperature of their food because they’d be too busy just having fun.

But alas, this isn’t the way the world works.

So as I age, I watch them age twice as quickly.

And when I have children, they won’t have the same perception of these people we share in common. Of their spry young grandparents throwing cocktail parties, sharing dirty jokes, and kissing them goodnight. They’ll just know these wrinkly old people who get grumpy when the sun sets. Who don’t understand the music kids listen to. And who just show up around the holidays.

And when my children finally get it, finally understand that these old people are my parents, that they raised me every day of my young life, it’ll be too late.

And by that time, I’ll be older and my kids will start to see me differently too--as they age and I start to age twice as quickly.

Eff you, Twilight.

I refuse to read you, Twilight.

Because I can only assume you're terrible. That's why everyone reads you. You require no effort at all.

You've sucked in one of my most intelligent, literary buddies. And I won't have it.

Your teenybopper love, your virginal vegetarian vampires, all of it can go to the inky hell from whence it came.

FUCK YOU, TWILIGHT. I will NEVER read you.*

After all, I read Sweet Valley High when I was in the third grade. I got my shit fix then.

*Consider this the exception to my dismounting the literary high horse.